Meet Beata Lerman

Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Beata Lerman. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Alright, so we’re so thrilled to have Beata with us today – welcome and maybe we can jump right into it with a question about one of your qualities that we most admire. How did you develop your work ethic? Where do you think you get it from?
I grew up in a very different society that people here are used to. My childhood was in a Soviet Russia, and the biggest influences on my work ethic came from my parents and grandparents. My grandmother was one of the best and most famous pediatric doctors in my region. She was known to have a gift for saving even the most hopeless medical cases. Often she will be leaving house in the middle of the night, or on weekends, or travel long distances to get to the sick child. Growing up I was very often in her medical office, seeing the care and attentiveness she would give to every one of her patients restoring back their quality of life. My grandfather was also highly focused professional. He was a dentist, and an educator. When I was growing up he was a director of a college for underprivileged children, and he would give them opportunities and skills to excel in live. My father was and electrical engineer with many inventions and patents. All this considered, like many families in Soviet Union we lived in poverty, and when the Soviet Union collapsed it went from bad to worse. I started my first job very early in life, when I was about 8 years old. I was taking newspapers from a local community publishing house and distribute it house to house. I remember how the stack was very heavy as I was first getting it, and how it got progressively lighter through the day as people were buying their community news. Then I would take the revenue back to the publishing house, and they would keep a part, and give me the rest. I would always take it back to my family and that was my contribution to the family budget. The 90’s were very turbulent time in Russia, and as I was growing up we saw many economic and social adversities. At the age 12 I discovered my aptitude and talent in life sciences, and so I pursued it to the fullest. I would go to school, and after that join a number of STEM extracurricular activities to expand my knowledge and excel in the scientific Olympics competitions (yes, that was a thing!). Simultaneously with my regular middle school and later high school I was also in the Regional Environmental Biological Institute weekend study program where the university professors would teach me and other gifted 12 and 13 year olds sciences based on western scientific papers. Being a student in such places was very competitive, and one could not afford bad grades, because you would simply lose your place, and with that any bit of status that come with wining those regional and national competitions. Also in that institute we would be chosen by the professors teaching the courses to do research in their labs, so we could also present our findings at the regional, national and international conferences. My first research project was studying the effect of heavy metal poisoning on the chromosomal abnormalities of the wild animals that lived near the polluting factory. When I started doing that research I was not even 13 years old yet. So through lots of hard work, good work ethics, and a bit of luck by age 15 I was a national vice-champion in the field of Biology, which was also a year I graduated from high school and moved to the US. Here, once I learned English, I drafted my first resume and went door-to door in Texas Medical Center, looking for a job as a research assistant. One of the professors at the UT Health Science Center, Dr. Dale Hereld saw a lot of potential in me, and took me under his wing. This was a start of my career here in Houston. Later I worked in all the main academic research institutions, earned my undergrad and later graduate degrees while always working full time and paying my way through. I helped my family re-settle after immigration and went on with my career and my life. I always felt that success would be an inevitable consequence of smart and hard work, and indeed it was the case. Now with two businesses, a family of my own and further purist of knowledge and innovation I am even more convinced that effort, empathy, perseverance, and constant quest for knowledge would always give result

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
As you could see from the first question my expertise is in health and in inventing new technologies. I have held many strategic roles in the biomedical industry over the years, including being in Medical Affairs, and also advising the development of medical treatments from pre-clinical to late clinical stages. This is exactly where Covid-19 has met me in my life journey. I was working in a large CRO, mostly in my field, Immuno-oncology, but when Covid hit all consultants and scientists were directed onto that. It was a very high stress environment, that even with all our training and experience it was too much to bear. I have seen many brilliant people simply burning out and leaving the field all together. By the mid 2021 I was among them. Worth noting that before the pandemic, in the early 2019 I was also diagnosed with cancer, the cutaneous T-cell Lymphoma. As any good immunologist would do when faced with the adversary like that, and to ensure a successful outcome of the immunotherapy treatment, as I had a 2 year old daughter at home, I decided to stop consuming sugar, carbs, and processed food, and went on what’s known as a ketogenic lifestyle. Sometimes I was still missing the desserts, but most of all I wanted chocolate. But I didn’t want the chocolate with the sugar, the one that would feed the cancer, if it was still in me somewhere, I wanted the “clean” sugar-free but indulging chocolate. Problem was, there just wasn’t any on the market. The sugar-free chocolate that were sold were simply unpalatable, and the once that tasted good, and that large sign “KETO” on them, were unfortunately far from being healthy, and really keto. So I went back to my scientific basics and decided to invent the chocolate that will offer me the same quality of the experience as the unhealthy counterpart, but at the same time be good for me, and keep the potential of the cancer returning at bay. Because there was no chocolate maker which would make the chocolate to that high standard I started researching what does it take to make chocolate. I learned about the raw ingredients, the cacao beans and cacao butter. I also extensively researched various natural and metabolically benign sugar alternatives. The keyword here is metabolically benign, because remember, i was not building a company yet, I was just trying to get myself a delicious and healthy chocolate. I learned about the equipment and the process, but the pinnacle of it all was my family trip to Costa Rica that year, where we stayed on a remote Cacao farm, and the owner one day offered to make us the chocolate out of her own cacao beans right in front of us. She had no specialized equipment, and she did everything by hand! But the result was a delicious chocolate, and I remember thinking, if she could do it without any equipment why can’t I? So upon my return I started to dig deeper into what would make quality chocolate. The cacao beans are the most important component. I wanted my cacao beans to be rich in flavor, organic and high in fiber. It was then when I learned about Cacao Nacional, the rare sort of cacao that only grows in select places on Earth, and accounts for less that 2% of all cacao trade. It is also known as an “Original DNA” cacao, the specie thought to be extinct as recently as 2012! In 2013 a small number of those trees were found in the rain forest of Ecuador, and confirmed by the genetic analyses. Since then dedicated farmers took it upon themselves to bring that cacao trees back from the brink of extinction, and they rely on us, artisan chocolatiers to support them in their effort. These cacao beans are very special, as they can only be grown organically, they can’t be genetically modified, and the farms that we source the beans from abstain from using any chemicals in the growing process. This allows me to make the most fragrant, flavorful, signature chocolate which we later use to craft our chocolate creations. These days we craft the chocolate into two primary collections: The Luxury collection, which makes memorable and exclusive corporate business gifts. This is uniquely crafted, sophisticated, handmade artisan collection which looks like gemstones and can be custom branded on the chocolate, the boxes or the decor. It is truly created to be impressive on all levels of senses. We also offer the more modern collection which we designated as “Premier” or “Elite”. It offers more direct to consumer price point to be enjoyed as personal gifts without the custom branding option. We now also offer a range of signature chocolate bars for that secret chocolate stash. You can indulge in every bite of it without having to pay with your health. We offer the signature bars in Dark, Milk and White chocolate, plain or with variety of options as fruits and nuts.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://sinlesstreatschocolate.com/
• Instagram: @sinlesstreatschocolates
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SinlessTreatsHouston/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/sinless-treats-us/
• Other: https://www.google.com/search?q=Sinless+Treats+Chocolate&stick=H4sIAAAAAAAA_-NgU1I1qLAwMzFINrSwMDM2SjM1STa3Agolm5onWaRYWhqapaaZmKcsYpUIzszLSS0uVggpSk0sKVZwzshPzs9JLEkFAKBqwmlEAAAA&hl=en&mat=CXeWWKYY68tnElcBpsFAC4nuU0hAB5uSByOAofKv2SfIrRa_VXXBUqkg8SITE2cg6B0q3kswfEeXgEx3BEFuvZOmms7T6pI8xRWugEW4sYyZJaiNRR7i_NhULy8XrqLQy4Q&authuser=2

Image Credits
Allen Ngyuen Manifestpointnshoot